"Accountability and self-responsibility are critical to our success. However, we often look for those traits in others, rather than inculcating them in ourselves”

- Vishwas Chavan

The High Performance Blueprint:

As a leader, there are certain things you need to do before you can expect employees to perform at their best.

You're responsible for creating a culture of accountability, developing a clear vision and strategy, and establishing expectations everyone can agree on. Once you've got those things in place, employees will be more likely to buy in and give their best effort. So if you're looking to get the most out of your team, make sure you focus on these 9 things first.

1. Make Sure They Have The Skillset

You have to make sure that the person you’re bringing into your organization has the skillset to even be successful. If you bring the wrong person in and put them into the wrong seat, it’s not going to work out.

2. Proper Onboarding

Once you have the right person, you need to have proper onboarding.  If you’re not onboarding employees in the right manner, you’re not equipping them to be successful in the role. 

3. Continuous Ongoing Training

It is important to continuously train your team.  Even if you have a rockstar onboarding and you teach them all the skills that they need in order to be successful, if you’re not continuing to sharpen that sword, and sharpen their skillset, then it’s no different than not onboarding them at all. You have to continue to equip your team to put them in a position to be successful and to thrive in that role. 

4. Help Understand Priorities

You need to help your employees understand what is priority in their role within the company. Are these tasks identified as urgent and important? Or maybe it’s important but not urgent? You must also make sure that you are explaining to them WHY certain tasks take priority over others. This will help them stay focused and avoid getting overwhelmed.

5. Structured Communication

Communication should be clear, concise, and structured in a way that everyone understands. If you’re not giving feedback, and you’re frustrated, or even if they’re frustrated and they’re not giving you that feedback, there’s nothing that anyone can change. If you don’t know, you can’t change anything, and if they don’t know they can’t change anything. It’s a two way street. You need to have consistent communication around structured feedback. This is very important to their success. 

6. Set Expectations

You need to set expectations for your employees from the very beginning so there are no surprises down the road.  If someone’s in a role and they don’t know exactly what’s expected of them, then how can we ever expect them to hit that minimum expectation? 

7. Create The Right Culture

The culture of your company will either attract or repel potential employees. Make sure you have a positive culture that attracts top talent. At the same time, you want to make sure that you are recruiting employees that fit into the culture you have created. Do this by having a theme and standards in place. YOU must live out that theme and those standards every single day, otherwise everyone in your organization is going to think you’re full of shit. 

8. Get Your Employees Commitment

Once you have found the right person and created a positive culture, you need to get commitment from your employees around the expectations that you set. Now we’re asking not only if they understand what we are asking them, but that they can commit to hitting those expectations as well. 

9. Hold Them Accountable

Finally, you need to hold your employees accountable for their performance. This includes setting goals and measuring progress along the way. Once you set the right expectations, communicate feedback, gain commitment you then must hold them accountable to the behaviors that you’re asking them to do. When you put all of this together, that is what helps your team thrive. 

If you want your business to succeed, it is important that you take responsibility for setting up your employees for success from the very beginning. By following these 9 steps, you will be well on your way to building a strong team that will help take your business to the next level!